Mass Killer’s Transfer to ‘Less Restrictive’ Facility Spurs Anger

Edward Charles Allaway, who shot and killed seven people during a rampage at Cal State Fullerton 12 years ago, has been transferred to Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, raising protests from his prosecutors and from relatives of his victims.

Both parties said they feared Allaway’s transfer from prison-like Atascadero State Hospital to the facility at Patton, described by a state official as “less restrictive,” indicates that mental health authorities may release Allaway in the near future.

“We’re vehemently opposed to that,” Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Martin G. Engquist said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “Our position is that he should never be released.”

Dean Owen, a spokesman for the state Department of Mental Health, said that law forbids his discussing the case of a specific patient. But he said that transfers from Atascadero have become necessary recently because of an increase in the hospital’s population.

He said that while Patton’s environment is “less restrictive” it is “equally (as) secure” as Atascadero’s. “There are 30-foot-high fences with razor wire around it,” he added.

No one has escaped from Patton since 1982, when California prison authorities took over security duties there, Owen said. Before then, patients had been escaping at the rate of nearly seven per month.

Owen denied that release policies are more liberal at Patton than at Atascadero. He emphasized that Allaway could not be released without an order from the Superior Court in Orange County, where Allaway was tried.

Allaway was a janitor at the Cal State Fullerton library when he shot nine people there on July 12, 1976, killing seven of them.

Allaway had been hospitalized in a mental institution about eight years before the shootings, complaining that he had been in a state of depression his entire life. He explained the shootings by saying that he believed people had been conspiring against him.

Tried for murder, Allaway was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to the Department of Mental Health, which assigned him to its most secure hospital, Atascadero.

Last year, Allaway, 48, still confined at Atascadero, petitioned to be placed in the department’s outpatient program. Typically, admission to that program leads to unsupervised release after five years.

But during a hearing on the petition in Orange County Superior Court last October, every medical expert called to testify, including a psychologist called by Allaway’s lawyer, testified that Allaway was too dangerous to be released.

In May, Allaway was transferred to Patton, an administrative move that does not require court approval. Engquist said the district attorney’s office received a routine notice of the transfer, but that it was placed in Allaway’s file and apparently forgotten.

Engquist said he was alarmed, because “it’s conceivable that transfers to less-restrictive settings could ultimately inure to his benefit to be considered for outpatient treatment.”

The prosecutor said he opposed the transfer but added: “I can’t tell you what if anything we are going to do or can do. We’re going to continue to monitor it closely. That’s about all we can say.” Engquist said he intends to visit Patton soon to see how Allaway is being treated and to talk with his therapists.

Pat Almazon, daughter of one of Allaway’s victims, said Monday that news of the transfer had left her “very upset.”

“You have no idea what it takes out of a person’s life, something like this. For the past 12 years I’ve sacrificed vacations and holidays, just to keep him behind bars. I could relax a year or two if I knew he’d be in that long. But I can’t relax,” Almazon declared, adding:

“I know he’s going to get out. I just know that--three to five years max. He’s got his foot right out the door now.”

She said she believes that Allaway is closer to release because “he’s got a whole new set of doctors to play with. He’s been a model prisoner. I don’t think he’ll try to escape; that would wreck his chance for being released.

“He’ll go back to court, but there won’t be a jury, and there’ll be some judge who’s getting ready to retire, and everybody’s interest will have waned. I’ve seen it happen, and I’m really angry.”

Owen said that the only way Allaway could be released from any state mental hospital would be under the outpatient program, which requires court approval and has “the most intensive supervision program in the state.” He said that the duration of supervision is determined by the court, not the Mental Health Department, but that five years is the average.

Under state law, once a patient is put on outpatient status, “if the slightest problem comes up, we can pop them back into the facility immediately,” Owen said.